HIRING IN A HOBBESIAN WORLD - SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND EMPLOYERS USEOF INFORMATION

Although economic theory and employers blame youths' labor market prob lems on skill and work habit deficiencies, hiring employers do not use information related To these attributes. To explore this discrepancy, the authors interviewed a sample of 51 employers about the informatio n they use in hiring entry-level workers. They found that employers ha ve much available information but mistrust information from mast sourc es. This mistrust explains their strong emphasis on impressions in int erviews, a method that has been shown to give invalid (and biased) res ults, which often results in their selecting unproductive workers. The authors also found that some employers overcome the problem of mistru sted information in two ways: using information from their own workers and from long-term social networks. Although economic theory assumes that labor markets respond to all sources of information, these result s suggest that employers use only information received in a social con text that ensures its trustworthiness.